PJ Music Factory

A Slow Warm-Up at the North Charleston Coliseum

· Coliseum · Charleston

Both notes say the band was slow to warm up and did not catch fire before the middle of the show, in a venue they call smallish. Five Horizons' note says Eddie joked that he now counted the show before a tour's last as the best, and that the crowd went wild.

On Saturday, October 5, 1996, Pearl Jam played the North Charleston Coliseum, a venue both chronologies name alike. The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's heading places it in North Charleston, SC, USA, and Five Horizons' heading places it in Charleston, SC, after the venue's name. Five Horizons gives an attendance of 9,000. The chronology's opening act line names Fastbacks, and Five Horizons' support act line names The Fastbacks. The chronology prints a setlist of eighteen entries and an encore of nine, and Five Horizons' set and encore lines give the same entries in the same order.

The show

A Smallish Venue

Five Horizons brackets 130m after its heading without stating what it measures. Both notes call the venue smallish, and the crowd and the staff kind to one another.

The Performance

Both chronologies print a soundcheck of three songs: "In My Tree," "Off He Goes," and "Mankind." The chronology's setlist runs "Sometimes," "Last Exit," "Animal," "Go," "Hail Hail," "Dissident," "In My Tree," "Corduroy," "Better Man," "Not For You," "Jeremy," "Black," "State Of Love And Trust," "Habit," "Rearviewmirror," "Elderly Woman," "Alive," and "Blood." The chronology prints the sixteenth entry, "Elderly Woman," with an ellipsis. Its encore holds "Present Tense," "Even Flow," "Daughter," an entry it prints as Improv, "Off He Goes," "Mankind," "Whipping," "Footsteps," and "Yellow Ledbetter." Both notes say the band was slow to warm up and did not catch fire before the middle of the show. Five Horizons' note says that, pausing after "Go," Eddie joked that as a kid he had thought a tour's last night the best one to see, and that he now counted the show before the last as the best, at which the crowd went wild. The same note says that Eddie's voice was showing fatigue, and that he explained "Present Tense" as a song whose music Mike wrote. After "Daughter," by that note's account, Eddie played a short improvisation, which it follows with a question mark. The same note says the audience later picked what would be played next, and its pick was "Footsteps."

The Next Step

Charlotte, the night before, is told in Throw Your Arms Around Me at the Soundcheck. Both chronologies put the next show two days later, October 7, in Fort Lauderdale; it is told in A Fast Satan's Bed in Fort Lauderdale.

Recording & sound

What the Record Preserves

Five Horizons' entry closes with a one-word line, photos, that reads as a link label of its page. The chronology's entry ends with a remaster series line that names the band, the date, and Charleston and carries the label info-file. Under the night's heading the chronology's page hangs six objects: an image whose markup title reads Setlist, three more images, and two links into its remaster series, one to a zip file and one to a text file. The house holds four files for the night, in two folders: a text file and a playlist in one, and the remaster series' information file and its fingerprint list in the other. The text file repeats Five Horizons' heading and its attendance line, then, under a line reading Setlist, gives Five Horizons' set and encore entries in Five Horizons' order and spelling, one to a line, except that its entry for the improvisation carries a question mark. The playlist names twenty-six MP3 files, each made of a name and the date, which leave out the improvisation and give "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" in full. The information file opens with three lines that name the band, the date, and the North Charleston Coliseum with its city and state. Under a line reading Sources, it prints two source lines, lettered A and B, and FLAC is the last word of each of them. Two lines say how the mix was made: its left side is the right channel of source B, except on "Whipping," where it is the left channel of source A, and its right side is source A's right channel. Its lineage line starts and ends with FLAC, and its notes, the file's own statement about processing, say that swings in volume were evened out, the volume raised, and many claps removed. Its twenty-eight numbered labels follow Five Horizons' set line in order from "Sometimes" to "Blood," then, after an Encore Break label, run from "Present Tense" to "Yellow Ledbetter," with an Improv label among them. The fingerprint list gives each of the twenty-eight FLAC file names a value, the names repeating the labels. The North Charleston Coliseum on October 5 comes down to one venue named alike and placed in two forms of its city, 130m that Five Horizons brackets without saying what it measures, an attendance of 9,000 in Five Horizons, one act under two forms of its name, eighteen set entries and nine encore entries in one order in both chronologies, a slow warm-up in both notes, six objects under the date, and four house files in two folders.

Other Media (2)

Other accounts

No further accounts of this show have been added.

Sources & thanks (4)
  1. Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — 1996 page
  2. Five Horizons — Concert chronology 1996, entry for 10/05/96
  3. Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — 1996 page, the entry for the date
  4. The house archive — Text file and playlist file in one 1996-10-05 folder, information file and fingerprint file (remaster series) in the other